Rwan­dan Records Album

What does tra­di­tion mean when the past is taint­ed by crimes? Who decides what is car­ried on a col­lec­tive knowl­edge and moored in the cul­ture? RWANDAN RECORDS is a sound instal­la­tion, radio play and live con­cert by Sound­ing Sit­u­a­tions fea­tur­ing artists from Rwan­da and Ger­many and com­bines pre-colo­nial accounts with sto­ries from the present. It invites audi­ence mem­bers to immerse them­selves in the sto­ries shared by Rwan­da and Ger­many.

What you expe­ri­ence in the piece on a musi­cal lev­el is a sound­scape formed out of field record­ings of nowa­days done by Klaus Janek, musi­cal field record­ings and music experts col­lect­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry start­ing from 1907 to the 80ies – the notion of a Rwan­dan audi­tive cul­ture scape. The voic­es of the record­ings which are acti­vat­ed by the audi­ence mix an own lan­guage sound­scape to the space. The pri­vate encoun­ters with those voic­es are now and then spo­rad­i­cal­ly inter­rupt­ed by a col­lec­tive­ly shared con­cert event: the music of these events you are hold­ing in your hand now.

“Isn’t that what polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed art is sup­posed to do—open up per­spec­tives? And isn’t that what art in gen­er­al should do […]?”

field notes mag­a­zine on the music of Rwan­dan Records pub­lished at the label Syr­phe